Durrant – children’s relationships

I think the relationship with teachers and other caregivers is different. Those other caregivers might not feel the same pressure that parents feel to have the perfect child; to feel that their child is a reflection on them which causes…adds a whole other layer onto parents interactions with their children. However teachers and child care professionals are dealing with a large group of children at one time which most parents aren’t which creates a whole other situation and set of challenges for them.  

So I think they’re different kinds of relationships, each is unique and each brings its own kinds of demands. But we know that in most places Early Childhood Educators are not permitted to use any form of physical punishment so they have found ways or received training and education in ways of managing a large group of, often, very young children and eliciting cooperation, respecting their developmental levels, meeting their developmental needs and I think that as parents we have a lot to learn from how they do that.  I think that’s also true of teachers; that very skilled teachers are able to manage a large classroom without yelling, and losing their tempers and hitting children, I mean hitting a child in a school now a days is almost unheard of, and yet teachers are able to handle a lot of very challenging situations across a range of personalities and temperaments and abilities and skills and so I think that the kinds of skills that those people have developed could be very, very helpful to parents in thinking about how to manage frustration, how to communicate clearly, how to send clear messages, expectations, how to guide and model for children–what we hope that they will learn to do—how to distract them, how to build their competence and so on.